Samurai at 2017 Hina Matsuri Festival

Wish I lived near Arvada, CO! I’d love to visit this festival.

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The armor of the samurai.   Labor intensive, intricate,  beautiful and full of meaning.  Rows of leather and plates of metal woven together with silk cord to make formidable protection.  Functional yet mesmerizing.

Dazzling helmets designed to strike apprehension into opponents upon recognition.

Join us this Saturday or Sunday, March 4th and 5th, at Simpson United Methodist Church, 6001 Wolff St. in Arvada, Colorado for the 49th Annual Hina Matsuri Festival. Hours are 11:30am to 4pm and this is a free event.

Enjoy the doll room, tea ceremony,  bonsai displays, ikebana (flower arranging) display, nonstop entertainment  including music and martial arts or have your name written in Japanese characters.

Here are a couple more displays you will be able to appreciate:

Lion Cub Doll from Hina Matsuri Festival

Suiseki Display From The Hina Matsuri Festival

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Snapshot #120

Huge blossoms usually get the spotlight, but today I wanted to give the little guy some attention. The clusters of yellow flowers on this Thryalis Glauca display the essence of the season to come.

I call this one, “Springish.”

Justice

No justice ’round here
No fairness or equity
Only exclusion


Life ain’t fair, pardner
Pull up your big girl britches
No whining allowed.


This brave new world lacks
Compassion and forgiveness
Callous survival

Snapshot #119

If I were a cabbage, I’d want to be just like this gorgeous magenta one. I call this, “What’s Next? Ornamental Onions?”

When Love Hangs Around

Impossible, she thought, that decades later the love still held. No one had ever cared for

Her this long and this well. Surprised after the first year when he still woke up beside 

Her. Didn’t he know she had so little to give in the way of affection? And yet he mined

Every modicum of goodness, prying tiny pieces and holding them beneath a magnifying

Glass until they caught fire and everyone had to acknowledge their presence. Even her.

Excoriate

Excoriate is one of those wonderful words that comes close to being onomatopoeic, at least in my mind.


One cannot say excoriate without making the harsh, almost abrasive sound reminiscent of sandpaper on wood. The word is one I find myself using often these days, more for its secondary definition than its primary; although, I can make both work in this poem.

                          EXCORIATE

Come clean, down to the brass tacks with steel wool, superfine grit sandpaper, and elbow

Grease. We hold these truths to be self evident, you elitist bastards, that ALL humans

Equally created have an irrefutable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Try as you might you cannot scrub these words from the collective memory of this country.

Call Me a Cab

I know my posts have been either political or floral lately. Here’s one that’s neither. Enjoy. And if there’s a 9-year-old in your life, share these with him/her.

P

And my favorite, in spite of the spelling and grammatical errors:

Peace and giggles, people.

Inanimate Objects

Barely scratched surface
Patina’d revelation
More than meets the eye

Mischievous metal
Scavenger of carrion
Vulture in waiting

Stacked terra cotta
Patient bare receptacles
Filled with potential

Snapshot #117

I have it on good authority that these charming little blossoms are celebrities, and apparently might be repelled by garlic and direct sunlight…. I couldn’t have come up with a better title than the one on its tag: “Calibrachoa Mini Famous, Vampire and Compact.”